Hotz lawyer: PS3 hacking case over, DMCA and IP abuse live on

Ars Technica spoke with Yasha Heidari, one of Hotz's lawyers, who said the most important thing to take from this case is a knowledge of how large companies strong-arm their opponents when it comes to copyright issues and the DMCA, and to be aware of your rights.

Anyway Sony is just protecting their product they invested billions of dollars into. So you guys need to stop acting like sony is evil. Sony was nice enough to include other os but since you guys tried to hack that. They removed it. So it your fault it gone. Sony is doing great this gen. They give us new features via firmware updates and they give us high quality games. So you guys boycotting Sony is just ruining a company that creates and provide high quality products.

"The issue is that people just click accept on online agreements or click that they agree, and suddenly they're facing legal battles across state lines."

everybody else who agreed to the agreement didn't get sued and dragged to court like hotz! seems like he was doing things he supposedly shouldn't! I click the agree button and play games as usual and not tinkering anything, so should I be worried of getting sued? NO!

in fact, I'm more worried about guys like hotz who are trying to tinker with their system to gain full access of the software and even going as far as accessing the public network used by all paying customers with their modded software and who knows what they would do next!

the most important thing that people misunderstood about ToS and agreements is they think that it only serve the provider, in this case, Sony while ignoring the fact that you, as the users are also in terms of important information such as credit card numbers etc., protected by it and provided with what ever service they are offering you as long as you play by the rules! in terms of playing your games, service provider are also securing and providing you with quality game sessions with the ability to ban cheaters and those who abuse the online system!

ToS and agreement are there so they can tell you to play by the rules! you can't simply come out bragging for free speech while knowingly doing what you shouldn't! rules are applied to everything and everywhere just like you can't smoke in public places or simply pee anywhere on the street! in order for you be in one without harm, just play by the rules or get ready for punishment!

Not butthurt at all. Hotz clearly had enough of fighting a Multibillion Dollar corp that could leave him in financial ruins for the rest of his life. It just wasn't worth it. Especially for a product that will be obsolete in another 5-10 years. I don't blame him for reaching a settlement with Sony.

I do agree with the lawyer though concerning consumers needing more rights against these corps. Not for hacking but to stop these businesses releasing Consoles that are clearly faulty (360) and devs releasing unfinished buggy products while not alerting the consumers that it doesn't work right. I mean everytime a game releases WE the consumers have to notify the devs of issues. Issues that are so obvious a monkey could see them. What happened to the devs testing their own games like Last Gen. The Games Industry needs some kind of intervention as they abuse consumer rights on many levels. Nobody would allow Movie companies to sell you a dvd then require you to pay another $10 to see the ending, so why do Games Publishers have the right to withold content on the disc that belongs to us.

the stuff you buy isn't always 100% yours to do what you want. There are always rules and guidelines regarding things you purchase. If you buy a car, you could put a jet engine on the back if you wanted to. But don't be surprised if you get a shitload of fines and tickets driving down the road at 120 mph.

Any adult knows this truth. I live in a state where the tint on my windows can only legally be so dark. I live in a city that is run by a housing association that can determine what color you are allowed to paint your house. Everything has limits even free speech. You can say and do what you want but that does not exempt you from the consequences of your actions. Geohot knew this. Anonymous knows this (which is why they are hiding their identities).

The hard truth is no one (except a passionate few) care. Most people have no idea who Geohot or Anonymous are. They don't know what OtherOS or the DMCA is. Because they have lives to live and could care less.

Maybe one day people will take to the streets to fight for their rights. But if you tell the average person about how corporations want to restrict you from messing with their product, something that takes more time and skill than they would care to devote to a computer system, their eyes will glaze over.

They said all that shit before the iphone got jailbroke. Then it went to court and jail-breaking your phone is now legal. Fighting this crap in courtrooms i show it is eventually brought down as laws passed by dishonest congressmen and signed by a dishonest president are examined by judges and found to be contradictory with prior law, nonsensical, unconstitutional, or unenforceable.

Sony didn't settle because they thought the case was going their way and they just felt sorry for the guy and magnanimous.

They knew they'd eventually lose either here or on appeal but they convinced George Hotz that it might take them five very expensive stressful years to lose if they wanted it to.

The judge was already way out of control allowing the suit to proceed in California and writing an injunction demanding an obvious impossibility and letting Sony preposterously call a lack of a controller card or onboard controller an "incomplete HDD". That was so lame it hurt to read it.

This way Sony doesn't risk any damaging ruling coming out of the case, or an embarassing dismissal due to lack of standing for SCEA due their not having ownership of the rights they claim were being infringed by violation of a user agreement they could not prove he signed that was not with SCEA, or just a lack of California Jurisdiction altogether.

This way Sony doesn't have to potentially answer for the IP's and Paypal info they subpoenaed. This way it all goes away quickly and Geohot promises not to something that they never actually proved he did and maybe people will just forget about it by this fall.

This way Geohot doesn't potentially spend the next few years seeking more donations as Sony stalls the case out and demands stranger and stranger things to keep it in play and is granted them by some fool judge who thought she might get on TV.

Meanwhile the judge herself probably got advised that the case was already irregular enough to hurt her career path if it blew up in her face, and wanted to back out herself. She probably encouraged a quick and relatively amicable resolution with a not so subtle threat that any resistance from either party had better be very clearly justifiable, and would cause a substantially less friendly and cooperative court room environment than had previously existed.

In short it was going bad for all concerned and they all wanted a way out and so one appeared and they took it.

Honestly I don't think Sony ever intended to win this case. Any outcome would have made them look bad. Instead they put Geohot through the wringer and made him sweat for a bit. Because everything Sony's lawyers did was legal. People didn't like that the judge allowed it but if it was truly outside the law, it could've been struck down. Did people actually think the court was going to rule in favor of a 20-something kid who produces nothing, employs no one, and only works for the glory of himself?

This case was a warning. Sony showed how far they would go to protect their IP, even if it meant making themselves look like the bad guy. Now no one can say "I didn't think they'd actually sue me. I bought it. I can do what I want." There are alot of people who want this battle fought in court, to be settled once and for all. But they don't think for a second they could lose. A judge could easily say jailbreaking is legal in phones but illegal on consoles. If jailbreaking an iphone could've lead to people abusing the carrier's network, that case may have gone a different way and that's what this case is.

I find it funny that people are hating Sony because they followed the law. It's like the O.J. verdict all over again.

Yeah no one really won with this case because of the settlement. However it doesnt mean that there wont be more lawsuits in the future. But if theres one thing that i am happy about is that its over finally.

it's true though, the real abusers of copyright are the publishers. there are who knows how many stories of these publishers going after people for so called copyright infringements. some kid who wrote a program to search the server at the college or university where he was studying got sued because his program was used to find pirate material stored on the servers, they took his life savings, and they got an injuction or whatever it was called that said he couldn't study computing ever again.

there was a teacher who had his lectures removed from youtube because he had the same name as some singer and the record company claimed a copyright violation, without any evidence.

and there are numerous other stories of how people have had their access to sites restricted because of bullshit copyright claims.

and they want to be able to get our internet cut off without the need for any evidence?

fuck that.

just think about it, how much of your daily life is now reliant on the internet? how much do you rely on information you can only get on the net? and if you have a medical condition a resource like the net being taken away could very well end up being life threatening, if the information you need to help manage your condition is found online.

i am a big fan of a series on youtube called yugioh abridged, i'm sure many of you have heard of it, it's a parody, and under most laws that kind of parody is perfectly legal as it's provided for free and without profit. but little kuriboh, the guy who makes the series keeps having his youtube account banned, but then he keeps getting in reinstated. the trouble is, there's an attitude of take down first, ask questions later, that's why that teacher got his lectures taken down, why an innocent home movie might get removed if there's some music playing in the background.

and just who owns the devices we buy anyway? are the manufacturers allowed to do what they want with our purchases?

http://www.youtube.com/resu... some of these lectures are well worth watching, this guy is an author who is totally against drm, that's why you won't find audiobooks of his novels on itunes, because they force drm on them. he has free downloadable copies of his books on his website, because he knows that people will be more likely to buy the print versions if they get to try the book out first.

this lecture is particularly relevant here. http://www.youtube.com/watc... he touches on devices that are designed so that they do things the user doesn't want them to do.

personally, if i was in any creative industry, i'd rather my work was pirated than restricted by drm and other security systems like it that only ever inconvenience legitimate buyers.